i finally received a response from the front office manager. i trust she would not mind my reproducing it here for completeness:
"Thank you for contacting me following your recent visit at Quail Hollow Resort. Needles to say, I am disappointed to learn of your poor experience with us. I apologize that I did not respond to your email/review sooner as it ended up in my spam folder.
Please accept my apologies for the lack of service in regards to your experience at the front desk, it is our responsibility to be hospitable and efficient at all times. I can assure you what you experienced was not the norm for the hotel, either in service, or in conduct of our staff. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this caused you. I will personally be contacting hotels.com to insure that this issue does not happen again with any of our future guests.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You are a valued guest and I would like to invite you back as our guest, so hopefully you can get a more accurate picture of what we have to offer at Quail Hollow. Following this email, I would like to send you a gift certificate for an overnight stay with breakfast for two. If you would like to accept our offer to return on us, please confirm your mailing address. Once again, my apologies for any inconvenience that we have caused you."